Category Archives: Kroger and Fresh Encounter

According to a brand new report by the Indy Star, a marketing war between several supermarket chains is now afoot in the greater Indianapolis area. This “war” is about who will get the lion’s share of the supermarket spaces formerly occupied by Marsh Supermarkets who in just the last month filed for bankruptcy. Marsh had begun losing customers and had been shutting down operations perhaps as a result of failing to understand the customer needs in the modern swift checkout era and perhaps not finding a niche that stores such as Kroger, who stands to be the biggest beneficiary of the closings did find.

A total of 44 stores are now leaving Marsh’s possession with 26 of them in Indiana that are being sold to Kroger and Fresh Encounter. Right now the biggest targets are in downtown Indianapolis where Kroger is now taking over at an apartment complex located at 227 West Michigan Street while Fresh Encounter will then be taking over Marsh’s building at 320 North New Jersey Street. So what does all this mean for these grocery store operations?

Sources say Kroger now has control of a Marsh grocery store that’s in very close proximity to one it already has operated, and some speculate as to whether or not they plan to demolish the former Marsh building on 86th Street. For Fresh Encounter, this is actually one of their first attempts to enter the big metropolitan markets as they’ve had mostly small town market chains and opened up smaller convenience stores as well. In fact, various market analysts even suspect Fresh Encounter might opt to keep the Marsh name with little changes to structure to see how it goes. But should they fail to learn from the Marsh lesson, who knows how long their grip on the Indianapolis lion’s share will last.